A warning has been issued to Southport dog owners after the attempted theft of a puppy from a car.

The owner of Power Paws dog care firm, Jo Pollitt, said that she was out walking some clients’ dogs in Ainsdale Village Park when a woman told her someone had just tried to kidnap her puppy.

Now Jo is urging local dog owners to be on their guard and to keep their pets secure.

She told the Visiter that the woman was in a “panic” and told her that two men had just tried to take her puppy from her car.

Jo, from Birkdale, said that the woman, whose name she does not know, had parked at a nearby Tesco on February 24 and had left the window “right down” for her four-month-old Staffordshire bull terrier, Humphrey.

She added: “The woman was a bit shaken and said she had gone inside the supermarket – but I am not sure whether she meant Ainsdale or Birkdale.

“When this happened apparently two men in a white van pulled up, ran to her car and were about to take the puppy.

“Luckily a man passing by saw all of this and said to them ‘what are you doing?’ – that is when the men got back in the van and sped off.

“If it was not for this man, who then stood guard and told the woman what happened, then the dog would have been gone.”

Jo, a professional dog walker, said she told the woman about gangs who go around stealing dogs and who mark people’s homes, cars, and property such as gates and walls with colour codes.

She explained: “They might used blue for a big dog or green for a small one – it is a code so they can come and take the dog.

“The woman told me that a couple of days before she had had four brand new tyres fitted and that she had that day noticed a big red mark on her tyre and did not know where it had come from.”

Jo said that these gangs are after any type of dog and that they are usually used for fighting, bait in the ring are bred or sold.

She added: “People do not realise that they will break into houses at night to get the dogs – they are not even safe in the back garden and especially should not be left tied up outside a shop.

“What these gangs are doing is stealing other people’s pets – they will even take cats for bait – they do not care and have no feelings for them.

“If these pets are there they will just take them. I have even heard about a theft somewhere else in the country where they took a dog off a child at knifepoint. We all need to keep an eye open for each other’s animals because what these poor things go through if they end up as fighting dogs or as bait it just awful.

“People need to be aware that this is going on. I have heard of a gang ring around Preston and I think it could be around here now.”